Tag: bulletins

It’s Monday morning, it’s cold and wet and traffic is at a standstill. You’re providing detailed traffic information every 15 minutes. So, while you can’t make the cars move, at least you can keep your listeners informed and entertained. Meanwhile the town’s facebook page is raging with posts from those people who have just got to the office. They are the ones who haven’t tuned into you yet.

There are many good reasons for investing in a traffic information system. We use Inrix media (others are available). Inrix provide traffic information to many of the main UK radio networks as well as other organisations. They have a cut-down version for Community Radio which is available at around £30 per month, which offers, in our case, around a 40 mile radius of our transmitter.

Here’s why I believe this is an investment well worth making:-

Listeners won’t tune away to another station to find out what’s happening on the roads.
It’s a sponsorship opportunity. 3 or 4 sponsor messages per hour has a value.
It’s an important contribution to ‘Social Gain’.
It’s a way of introducing another voice to the mix.
And it’s a way for a new volunteer to quickly feel valued.
Big stations cannot provide the detail which you can.
Listeners love to hear mention of roads which are familiar to them.
A new recruit, a former driving instructor, joined us offering to help compile our traffic reports. He knows the roads and the hot-spots well, but he didn’t want to go on air. Well my friends, within 2 days he was firmly installed in the studio having a great time. Next he set up a twitter account and asked listeners to let him know about anything we weren’t reporting (“as long as it’s safe and legal to do so”). Next we taught him how to conduct and record an interview …. and now he hosts his own programme. This is a great Volunteer Success Story!